Deer Creek: The Real Story On The Dead’s Most Dangerous Night

On July 2, 1995, a death threat against Jerry Garcia turned Deer Creek into the most dangerous night the Grateful Dead ever played — and the band answered the riot in real time, song by song.

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That afternoon in Noblesville, Indiana, someone called police claiming two men with guns were coming to kill Jerry Garcia during the show. The FBI got involved. Security was pulled off the perimeter to protect the stage — which left the back fence unguarded. During Phil Lesh’s “Broken Arrow,” it began to buckle. During Bob Weir’s “Desolation Row,” it came apart, and tens of thousands of people without tickets flooded the lawn while German shepherds and tear gas met them at the gates.

What almost nobody on the lawn could see was what the Grateful Dead were doing on stage under full house lights. This is the argument of the video: the Deer Creek setlist isn’t a list of tunes — it’s testimony. Garcia opened set one with “Dire Wolf,” the same “don’t murder me” joke he’d pulled at Madison Square Garden in 1979 the last time someone threatened his life. He forgot two of the three verses of “Fire on the Mountain.” And in set two he deliberately called “New Speedway Boogie” — the song Robert Hunter wrote about the Altamont killin